11 November 2025
Once, she had ruled every room she entered. Laughter followed her like music, mirrors adored her, and men stood a little straighter when she passed. There was always another party, another toast, another someone who said she was unforgettable and for a while, she believed it. Her beauty was her crown; her charm, her dominion.
But the years arrived quietly, uninvited. The parties grew fewer, the lights harsher. Faces she’d once known so well began to blur, replaced by strangers who spoke her name with polite confusion. Her reflection became a negotiation: tilt the mirror, dim the light, ignore the tremor in her hand. She learned to drink before she dressed, and again before she left, until the blur itself felt merciful.
Now her kingdom is a one-bedroom flat with curtains always drawn. The perfume bottles are empty, their glass clouded with dust. She still keeps her old dresses folded, sacred, relics of a faith that has abandoned her. Sometimes she puts one on and sits by the window, half expecting applause. The silence hurts more than cruelty ever did.
She spends her nights with ghosts: the man who said he’d never leave, the friend who borrowed a dress and never returned, the younger self who still believes in light. In the mornings, she wakes on the sofa, makeup smeared, bottle tipped over like a fallen chalice. Her body aches from the simple fact of continuing.
There are moments, brief, merciless, when she catches herself in the mirror and doesn’t look away. She almost smiles at the stranger staring back, as if they share a secret: that the crown was never real, that the throne was just a chair, and that every kingdom, sooner or later, becomes a mausoleum.
The Hollow Queen • Opuss № I